Pre-Assessment Checks Now Available to EUTM Applicants
In a statement released on its website on June 2, 2023, the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) announced that a pre-assessment check tool is now available to European trade mark (EUTM) applicants. As its name indicates, this tool is designed to check EUTM applications for specific issues at the pre-filing stage, that is, before the application is submitted for review by the EUIPO examiners.
Once the tool is activated by the applicant (in the filing configuration section of the EUTM filing form), pre-assessment checks will be carried out automatically as the applicant fills out the form. For now, these checks can help identify issues pertaining to the deceptive or offensive character of the trade mark, as well as conflicts between the same and any registered EU domain or plant variety denomination.
The purpose of this new filing tool is obviously to reduce “delays and rejections of trade mark applications,” by allowing applicants to identify and correct issues in their trade mark applications before filing. However, the EUIPO made sure to specify that “the results of the tool are purely informative and non-exhaustive”. In other words, correcting issues in any given EUTM application based on the results of the pre-assessment check tool is in no way a guarantee that such application will be accepted and the corresponding EUTM trademark registered.
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